Guy Kawasaki’s remarkable journey from a jeweller to the world’s best marketing guru
Guy Kawasaki started off as a humble jeweller and later went on to become a venture capitalist, an international bestselling author, an entrepreneur, and chief evangelist of Apple. His journey in transitioned from one role to another is one of a kind. His accomplishments and achievements throughout this journey are remarkable to say the least. This symbolic figure of the Silicon Valley who lived in the island of Honolulu as a little boy wouldn’t have imagined getting a Stanford and UCLA education, starting businesses, advising the CEO of Motorola, and serving on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees once upon a time.
Image credits: www.wikipedia.com
“When the clouds parted and I heard angels singing”
Guy Kawasaki started working in a little known company called Apple through his roommate Mike Boich. Mike told Guy about a prototype computer called the ‘Macintosh’. Back then no one really knew much about personal computers. Kawasaki’s ‘aha!’ moment came then. He says it was at this very moment that “the clouds parted and I heard angels singing.”
He saw what a Macintosh could do and for four years, evangelised Macintosh to software and hardware developers.
After Apple
In 1987, Guy Kawasaki left Apple to start a Macintosh database company called ACIUS. For Guy, his happening years were at Apple. However, it was at ACIUS that he learnt lessons on startups. “You only hear about the great successes, and you might come away with the impression that entrepreneurship is easy. You never hear about the thousands of companies that fail and how hard entrepreneurship is,” he says, as stated by an article in Nordic Business Forum.
Guy adorned the roles of a speaker, writer, and consultant after leaving ACIUS in 1989. He has published 13 full-length books. His multiple bestselling books include The Macintosh Way, The Art of Social Media, and State of the Art. It was in this year that he started a new company called Fog City Software.
Rejoining Apple
In 1995, when Apple was living its toughest chapters, Guy rejoined Apple as an Apple fellow. At this point of time, he had to help sales pick up and revive the Macintosh cult. After getting involved in high technology companies and familiarising with Silicon Valley’s startup entrepreneurs, Guy got a good idea about venture capital and investments. He later founded Garage.com, an angel investor matchmaking service. Today Garage.com is called Garage Technology Ventures.
He became a special advisor in 2013 to the CEO of the Motorola division of Google after delving into the world of venture capital, investing, and founding companies.
Again a ‘chief evangelist’
In 2014, he joined the Australian web design startup Canva and brought back the title of ‘chief evangelist’. He explains, “I’m into democratizing stuff and making the world more of a meritocracy. Apple democratized computing, enabling millions of people who could not have afforded or comprehended computing to use this new tool. Canva is also a democratizing force. It is democratizing design so that people don’t have to buy or rent expensive software and spend months learning it to make beautiful designs.”
Guy Kawasaki is definitely one of the social media's power users. He is a fan of Facebook and Twitter and considers Facebook to catalyse the most interaction and engagement. He has been getting out content through literally every channel and source available. He loves content marketing and doesn’t believe in writing a book as a marketing tool. He says a book is an end in itself.
No doubt his fans are eagerly awaiting his next book to enlighten them. This symbolic figure of marketing and success has the character of an ideal individual. He has proved time and again what it takes to succeed. It’s leaders like him who help create stars of the next generation and make us exclaim HolyKaw!